Press Photo / Katie GreeneArtists Tali Farchi, at left, and Royce Deans create paintings on spinning easels while using music from visitors' iPods as inspiration for their ArtPrize Jukebox pieces.

Music-meets-visually striking beauty-meets-audience interaction could be a theme of this year's ArtPrize.

Perhaps nowhere is it more beautiful than the “Korye-United” community art project outside St. Mary's Catholic Church on Grand Rapids' West Side, a colorful and humbling exhibit led by Grand Haven coffee shop owner Mary Mitchell.

Hundreds of four-inch wooden discs decorated by volunteers from across the country hang from “trees” above 30 bucket drums painted by Ottawa Area Center graphics arts students. It's a piece aimed at raising funds for the Korye Dance Theatre and drum troupe in Ghana.

Originally, drummers from Ghana were to travel to West Michigan to perform at ArtPrize to enhance this impressive display at 423 First St. NW, but sadly their visas were denied amid bureaucratic red tape.

Organizers of the art project and its fund-raising component have persevered, with ArtPrize visitors invited to play the bucket drums on their own and other groups, such as the Steel Doin' It steel drum band, stopping by to perform on weekends.

More important, the wooden discs – as well as drumsticks from Ghana – are being sold for $5 each, with half the funds going toward a school-building project in Ghana and the other half toward under-served educational programs in West Michigan. (To get involved, go online to Fat Chix Coffee Cantina's Facebook site here.)

It's a music-based art project with a worthy mission.

Another interactive West Side display features resplendent paintings inspired by tunes from iPods plugged into the artists' stereo system by ArtPrize visitors. With music ranging from jazz to rock filling the air, Royce Deans of Traverse City and Tali Farchi of the Netherlands create their “ArtPrize Jukebox” works on spinning easels at Steepletown Center, 671 Davis Ave. NW, while visitors watch.

“I like to give some randomness to what I do,” Deans told me, noting he always tries to “involve the community in some way.” They plan to complete 45 large paintings by the time ArtPrize wraps up.

Strangely enough, one of the pair's most compelling works resulted from a session in which music offerings ranged from raging death metal roars to lilting Justin Bieber pop songs. Go figure.

“We've had some crazy stuff,” Deans conceded. “It's kind of like doing music as subject.”

Therein lies my point.

Music as inspiration or as subject matter has been a staple of ArtPrize since it began in 2009. But this year, for the first time, ArtPrize also provides something exclusively for the ears: song as entries in the international art competition.

And as much as I respect and understand the motivation for formally bringing music into the ArtPrize conversation, I've concluded that songs shouldn't be ArtPrize entries – at least, not in the way the competition is structured now.

Primarily a visual arts competition, ArtPrize boasts scores of artists who've incorporated music into their paintings, sculptures, mosaics or performance art pieces. They've taken that next step in bridging the visual with the power of music.

Consequently, it's almost impossible to reasonably judge a song (heard once on an iPod at a listening station in a basement art gallery) against these other visually forceful artworks.

The proof comes in the voting numbers at ArtPrize: Only one of the 47 songs entered in ArtPrize, pianist Sam Stryke's “Unconditional,” managed to break into the Top 25 vote-getters in the Hillside district where St. Cecilia Music Center hosted music entries.

And not surprisingly, a song wasn't among ArtPrize entries chosen for the Top 10, announced on Thursday night.

There are built-in obstacles: ArtPrize visitors, already pressed for time to see hundreds of entries, simply won't stand at a listening station at St. Cecilia to hear all of this year's entries. At roughly 5 minutes a song, that would take about four hours.

The Rhythm of ArtPrize 2011Scores of 2011 ArtPrize entries in Grand Rapids are inspired by (or created about) music. Here are just a few of them.

I understand the ArtPrize intelligentsia's desire to broaden the definition of art to make the competition more inclusive, even counting public events like River City Improv's “Congratulations” gathering on the Blue Bridge last weekend with people getting pats on the back for personal accomplishments.

So if events and songs can be ArtPrize entries, what about poetry, novels and short stories? Shouldn't writers – hey, even journalists – share a piece of the ArtPrize hoopla? Don't “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “War and Peace” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” constitute great art?

My suggestion: 2012's ArtPrize should host a separate songwriting competition, with a separate voting or judging component, to give musicians equal footing in the contest and give voters an opportunity to compare songs in a context that makes more sense.

Song entries could be posted online so folks could listen to them at their leisure. Another music showcase could be staged so ArtPrize visitors could hear the artists perform the songs live as well.

The prize for such a contest could be modest, perhaps a few thousand dollars – less than that awarded the ArtPrize's Top 10, but thousands of dollars more than what any ArtPrize musician had a shot at winning this year.

Granted, the first-time song effort was considered an experiment and it earned positive feedback. I say build on those positive vibes by organizing MusicPrize for 2012. A separate competition for writers and poets may be merited, too.

Music deserves a spot at the ArtPrize table, but it also deserves a more equitable shot at evaluation by voters.

I mean, c'mon.

Would it be fair to decide whether the “Mona Lisa” is superior to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony? Or to judge Andy Warhol's “Campbell's Soup Cans” against The Rolling Stones' “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction”?